


Gunpowder

by enemyfrigate



Category: X-Men (Movies)
Genre: Community: help_haiti, First Time, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Rescue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-28
Updated: 2012-12-28
Packaged: 2017-11-22 17:43:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/612491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enemyfrigate/pseuds/enemyfrigate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For only the second time in his life, Gambit prays for rescue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [heeroluva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heeroluva/gifts).



As Gambit leaps from the mansion’s roof into the hovering helicopter, he has time to think two things: one, that it is a good thing he had his boots resoled recently, and two, that he hopes someone is watching, because he’s going to need a ride home later.

The pilot and co-pilot are just turning when Gambit flicks barely-charged cards at them. They flinch away from the little flares, leaving Gambit room to lunge in and steer the helicopter away from the mansion. He hit’s the throttle, opens it up wide. He counts down from thirty, knowing he has to buy enough time for the mansion’s new air defenses to come on line.

The pilot reaches for something, and Gambit back hands him, hard.

Then there’s a pistol pressing under Gambit’s ear….and 3, 2, 1. Gambit takes his hands from the controls and straightens up. Turns around at the terse command of the man behind him.

The mocking smile on Gambit’s face freezes.

The maze of scars on his forearms twist in his skin.

“Welcome back, Mr. Le Beau,” Stryker says.

For only the second time in his life, Gambit prays for rescue.  
　  
　  
Logan shoves the med pack into his shirt, adds the canteen to his belt. Wraps the pack in a waterproof bag and stashes it under a dead tree, one of several in this old growth hollow somewhere in the Canadian Rockies. 

His head lifts into the wind. His nostrils flare. He smells metal, and men, and insanity - there, two points to the north.He sights on that peak and then another, crouches down to pinch up some dirt and get its scent. Memorizes that configuration of trees and the way the ground rises to the east, and dips to the south.

Logan takes a deep breath. Gambit needs him.

He lets the animal rise.

The Wolverine takes up the hunt. He paces through the forest with the tireless lope of the hunting beast, his senses crackling with shapes, sounds, scents, the flow of the air and the slap of a leaf. His thoughts eddy, swirl, lose words to instinct, with action a mere nerve‘s speed away.

The ground rises into another mountain, and Wolverine surefoots over boulders. The mountain’s shoulder falls away into a crack and he works his way down the gorge on a goat trail, somehow balancing his great weight on the inches wide track over a sheer fall. He feels no fear, no thought of consequences beyond delay that cannot be tolerated.

Wolverine homes on Gambit. How, he cannot say. But he knows: there is his friend, and his friend is in trouble.

The beasts of the forest fade away from him. Deer melt into shadows. Moose amble through underbrush and take no notice of the thorns, their slow footfalls a bare echo of their passage. His smaller brother, a four footed wolverine, regards him from the hollow of a fallen tree, unafraid, ready to fight if challenged. 

Wolverine registers the creatures of the forest, and passes on. His heart beats steady, breaths a perfect rhythm. His energy is a great well that cannot be emptied. He is saving himself for the kill.

Pre-dawn light finds Wolverine working his way down progressively more tumbled fields of huge rocks where some long melted glacier had once held sway. There’s a scruffy bit of evergreens at the bottom of the slope and then another broken shoulder of mountain to climb, the back side of the secret base Stryker has taken Gambit to. He pauses in the narrow band of trees to consider possibilities for cover on the mountain.

A greater shadow among the trees, not 20 feet off, resolves itself, a great hulk becoming clear as the light brightens. A full grown male grizzly raises his massive head, regards Wolverine.

The two top predators hold each other’s gaze. Wolverine cannot go around. He cannot wait.

Wolverine will not give way. He stares the grizzly down.

The grizzly shakes its head and paces off.

Wolverine slips into the secret base - this one is new to him - under cover of the full light of morning, when no one will expect an invasion.

He takes down the two guards on the door before they can stop being surprised and leaves them bleeding out on the metal floor.

The place smells of stone dust, burtn metal, fear sweat. Wolverine moves slowly, teasing Gambit’s gunpowder scent from nondescript human, other mutants, who always smell somehow brighter, the tell tale tags of chemicals, the tang of surgical instruments.

His nostrils flare: Stryker. But it’s an older scent, and Wolverine forces rage aside. His friend comes first. He draws two full lungs of air, half closes his eyes. There: he needs to head north-east.

Most of the rooms here are abandoned: cells, open and empty; a barracks room with bare cots; labs, dusty and dry. He works his way inward, counts off maybe a dozen different beings in the place, all the while following Gambit’s scent, which dissolves and reappears, flares and melts away, hangs in the air like smoke and dissipates like there‘s been a storm.

Wolverine finds a vacant cell awash in Gambit-smell. He ranges back and forth across the corridor, quartering. Gambit has been taken elsewhere. Has gone elsewhere. Which way?

A stronger trace of gunpowder tickles his nose and Wolverine lopes down halls and access corridors, claws ready, tracking Gambit’s scent-trail.

Half a level down, Wolverine runs his target down in a tangle of machine rooms.

Gambit rises from his crouch by something all metal and blinking lights. He holds half a dozen shards of metal at the ready. He’s got a black eye, a bruised jaw, lines of dried blood criss crossing his chest, arms, and hands.

He smells of sweat and adrenaline - and fear, though Wolverine can’t place that scent at first, it’s so foreign to this man - but Gambit’s eyes are fierce under the tangled hair.

“Logan?”

Wolverine shakes his head. That’s him, isn’t it? He shakes himself all over, runs his tongue over lips gone dry. “I - yeah,” Wolverine says.

“Merde, I almost killed you,” Gambit says.

“We gotta go,” Wolverine says.

Gambit shakes his head. “Not yet. Watch the door.”

Wolverine takes up station just inside the doorway and extends his senses. Nothing, so far.  
Behind him, metal scrapes metal and buttons click.

“Alright,” Gambit says. “Let’s go. We got about half an hour lead time. Maybe.”

Wolverine looks Gambit over. He’s not in top shape, looks overall like he’s been run too hard. Still, he’s ready, he’s game, and that’s all Wolverine requires. He takes point and Gambit follows at his shoulder.

They step over the bodies of the dead guards, skirting the still liquid blood on the floor, and walk casually down the mountainside. Fast movement draws attention, and Wolverine wants to conserve his companion’s strength. They pass the grizzly wood at a decent pace before the first patrol emerges from the mountain.

Wolverine draws Gambit into a narrow cleft between two massive boulders to watch their hunters. He pulls the canteen off his belt and offers it to Gambit, who takes two swallows and passes it back. Wolverine draws a mouthful of water and lets it trickle down his throat. There’s nothing they can do until this patrol sweeps past.

The two soldiers pass within twenty feet of Wolverine and Gambit’s shelter. Without thinking, Wolverine  
moves to stalk them down.

“Non, Logan, this way,” Gambit says. “Come on, homme, we got a ways to go, and me, I’m not so strong on my feet.”

Wolverine steadies Gambit with a hand on his belt, an arm around his waist, whatever he needs to get through the rocks. He would carry him, if they had more cover. But here they’re too exposed, and Wolverine needs his claws free.

It’s good to have a packmate again, Wolverine thinks. His companion is not as good in the woods as Wolverine is, but he doesn’t get in Wolverine’s way and he can soft foot across a graveled slope like the lightest fox.

Wolverine can still smell blood on the man following him, but that’s not a skill the humans will have. The enemy will have other things, seeing things and air things, and so they have to get under cover of trees.  
And then they are away into the woods.  
　  
Armed men explode out of shabby frontier buildings when Gambit and Wolverine step out into the bush town’s single street. Wolverine strikes the first before he can get his gun up from ready position, claws shearing through the barrel of the automatic weapon and down through the man’s shoulder. The soldier screams as he falls, big shoulder artery severed and pumping liquid life down his camo uniform.

Wolverine spins away, not hampered at all by the pack he‘d retrieved from the woods.

Gambit puts the second man down with a handful of flashing cards, gritting his teeth at the grind of pain through his arms. He grabs the soldier’s gun out of the air and finishes him with a burst to the head.

A third and fourth man charge. Then there’s a squad moving to surround them and Gambit feels the red rage rising, the rage-fear at being trapped and returned to his cage.

He casts more cards at the soldiers. His arms throb. Several go down, but it’s not enough.

Wolverine rushes the line and a hailstorm of bullets strike him, lodge under muscle, tries to make a bloody mess of his knees, but the injuries only fuel Wolverine’s near-berserker rage. His healing factor and the adamantium clothing his bones are just bonuses.

They must finish this, Gambit knows, or the helicopter that’s been stalking them for the last hour will descend.

Fuck. Too late. The hovering craft sweeps over them with search light blazing, less to show them up - they  
have night vision for that - than to dazzle the eyes of their prey.

Wolverine coming for Gambit just doubled their prize value.

Gambit takes to the bed of Wolverine’s pick up, stashed here when he came on the rescue mission. He hopes his timing hasn’t deserted him, and ignores the pain of his ribs, his head, the sick feeling in his throat, the cold burning in his arms. He throws himself off the top of the pick up and seizes hold of the landing gear of the helicopter.

The aircraft wobbles.

Gambit knows any hesitation will be fatal. Will have to be, because Gambit will die in pure screaming agony before he lets Stryker lay a hand on him again. Gambit hauls himself up and throws himself into the copter, survival knife in one hand, and nothing but fury in the other.

The co-pilot scrabbles for a handgun, gets it up in time to squeeze the trigger. The survival knife spears him through the throat and his hand slackens.

With raw adrenaline keeping him on his feet, Gambit yanks the blade loose and reaches for the controls, but the pilot, frozen, won’t move his hands.

“I’ll take you anywhere you want, man,” the pilot says. “Just give the word.”

“Fuck. You.” Gambit drives the knife into the pilot’s eye.

The copter yaws as the pilot dies over the controls but Gambit is there, Gambit knows this machine. He crowds himself around the dead pilot and brings her steady, sets her down in the middle of the dirt street.  
With a distaste that brings gorge to up his throat, Gambit hauls the bodies out of the copter and drops them clear of the bird.

Wolverine stands yards away, gun held in expert hand, a feral glint in one eye. The street looks like a killing field. He’s covered in blood and looks like he’s about to take off for the woods. The copter has phased him, set him further back into wild, cautious ways.

“Logan,” Gambit calls, “let’s go.”

Wolverine hesitates, looks over his shoulder. Gambit could swear he twitches an ear.

“Logan. Now,” Gambit says, putting a whip crack in the command.

With a shake of his head, Wolverine jogs over to the copter, and jumps in.

“I’ll try to keep her level and true, old man,” Gambit says. When he sits down at the controls, his hands are trembling.

Wolverine stares out the window, watching their back trail. He reaches over and puts one strong hand on Gambit’s, stilling his fingers on the stick. 

Gambit rolls his shoulders and takes the bird up, Wolverine’s hand steady on his own.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Logan,” Gambit says. “I need you. I need - you got to be here with me, homme. I need the man. Not the animal anymore.”

Five hours later, Wolverine follows Gambit into a Thieves Guild safe house in Vancouver. Since Gambit had ordered him into the air, he feels like he is moving in slow motion, as if the air around him has turned to thin mud. Gambit has done what was necessary, found them safe harbor for now, sent a message for pick-up. All Wolverine can see is what’s right in front of him, and there’s nothing to fight, nowhere to invade. Right now, all that makes sense is to follow his packmate’s lead - and guard him. Guarding makes sense.

Gambit says this little ranch house is safe from Stryker’s people, but Wolverine makes a circuit and memorizes windows and doors and weak points while Gambit does something with machines and screens that show the outside of the house. It is still cold here, a spring night, and Wolverine brings an armload of wood inside. The central heating could take awhile to kick in and he knows Gambit needs to be warm to feel really safe. Wolverine builds the fire and lights it, settles into making a shelter for his friend.

Gambit finishes with the security machines and shrugs out of the shirt Wolverine lent him, wincing at the pull of plaid wool flannel on the half-scabbed surgical cuts on his chest and arms. The scent of fresh blood creeps across the room. Gambit goes into the bathroom, and Wolverine hears the water start and boots hit the floor, the soft slide of the ruined dress slacks onto tile. The sound of the water changes when Gambit steps in. Wolverine hears his friend hiss, and then gasp. Hears a stumble.

Wolverine pushes the bathroom door open. His own scent of dirt and blood and wild contrasts with the clean smell of the tile and soap, and Wolverine shifts, uneasy, in the doorway

“Logan,” Gambit says. “I need you. I need - you got to be here with me, homme. I need the man. Not the animal anymore.” He stands naked under the water, barely visible shudders taking him, holding himself up with one shoulder against wet tile.

Smells rise under the hot spray: instead of sweat, adrenaline, the trace of gunpowder that Wolverine associates with Gambit’s explosive powers, he perceives the alien, throat choking chemical scents, hot metal, sterile alcohol.

That’s not right. That’s not Gambit.

Wolverine shucks his clothes and steps into the shower. He takes up a washcloth and some soap to scrub Gambit clean.

Logan comes back to himself with Gambit under his hands. He huffs a breath, looks around at a duller world.

“Welcome back, homme,” Gambit says. He sounds weary beyond describing.

“You okay?” Logan says. He shapes Gambit’s ribs under his hands, feels for swelling, breaks, anything wrong on his torso. There’s nothing serious. Logan thinks: they were probably saving him for something. His rage rises but he eases it aside. He’ll use it later. Right now, he’s got other business.

Gambit’s exhausted, legs shaking, and Logan curses the animal mind that lets him attend only to the absolute necessities. Gambit should have had rest, better food than a Power Bar, his wounds cared for and safety long before now. Yet Gambit isn’t complaining. Gambit is tough. He’d be insulted if Logan said anything like he’d been thinking. Hell, he’s come this far - but now he can rest, and Logan will stand between him and the world.

Logan shifts, thinking of retrieving a towel and getting them out of here, but Gambit doesn’t budge from his slight shoulder lean on the wall. Logan puts an arm around his chest and takes some of his weight. Gambit tenses, then leans against Logan, head tipped back against Logan’s shoulder.

In the glaring bathroom light, the grim scrollwork of the old scars on Gambit’s forearms stand out like secret writing. New lines of red blood trace the old marks, offset and sometimes blurred. Gambit had fought, Logan sees, and the butchers had been clumsy.

The water cools, and Logan steers Gambit out of the shower. Finds him towels. Dresses himself, and goes to the pack for the med-kit.

Gambit’s hurts are slight, really. He’s had worse sparring with the other X-Men. Logan tends each slice and bruise with great care. He forces himself to use the alcohol to clean the incisions. Gambit holds himself still and impassive, sitting on the edge of the bathtub with a damp towel wrapped around his hips. There’s no way to bandage the involved tracery of cuts over Gambit’s chest without turning him into some kind of mummy. Logan puts a few butterfly bandages on the wider cuts, smears antibiotic ointment on everything bleeding. He wraps wide bandages around Gambit’s forearms and hands, like elbow-length fingerless gloves. They hadn't gotten to his hands, yet, and relief washes through Logan. What they'd done was obscene enough,

Logan digs through the dresser in the bedroom - he dimly remembers Gambit saying something on the phone to his Guild contact about clothing and food in place. He finds a stack of basic sizes, basic clothing, and fishes out shorts, sweatpants, a long sleeved tee shirt, all in black, and takes them in to Gambit.  
“Thanks,” Gambit says.

Logan nods. “You need help?”

“I got it. Come get me if I fall.”

The kitchen has some basics, too, but Logan rejects most of them. Take too long, all this frozen stuff. He pokes through the refrigerator, finds that someone has been here with some fresh supplies. He defrosts some French rolls and toasts them, adds cheese and thin-cut roast beef. Digs orange juice out, too, and some cut vegetables from the deli stuff. Puts everything on real plates, and drags the kitchen table over by the fire. Almost forgets, but goes back to the refrigerator for a jar of hots. Gambit likes his food spicy.

The first thing Logan always does after escaping imprisonment is remind himself that he is human, not a lab animal. Sitting at a table and eating off real plates, that’s not something animals do.

Gambit throws on Logan’s flannel shirt, finds some socks, and comes to sit in the chair close to the fire - Logan left it for him - and wolfs a sandwich. He eats three before sitting back in the chair, swallowing the last glug of juice, and starting in on the carrots and celery.

Logan polishes off his fourth sandwich and wonders what else the fridge might hold. He took a lot of damage today.

“What’s for dessert?” Gambit says, echoing his thought.

“Got to be something in there. You want coffee?” 

“I’ll make it,” Gambit says. “You don’t do it right.” 

“Been making coffee since before your grandfather was born, kid,” Logan says.

“Army-camp coffee is not real coffee.”

“Bitch, bitch, bitch,” mutters Logan.

He gets a little half-smile for that. “I’ll make the coffee. You find dessert. I am empty, homme, like you wouldn’t believe.”

They work around each other in the small kitchen, two men long used to working with each other in close quarters. Gambit does mysterious things with the complicated coffee maker this place has - the Guild probably stocks Gambit’s favorite kind in all its safe houses - and Logan rummages half a chocolate cheesecake out of the freezer.

While the coffee makes, Logan checks the monitors, but sees nothing out of the ordinary. This is a suburban neighborhood, kids and dogs and mini-vans and grannies, and secret operations in a place like this are near impossible. But only near-impossible: it can be done. Logan has done it himself. He’s not sure what resources Stryker has access to these days, but he won’t count out the chance that they could face opponents nearly as good as they are. He’ll just have to keep alert, that’s all, while somehow making sure Gambit rests.

He goes back to the fire, and finds Gambit taking plates and glasses into the kitchen. Turns out, etiquette in a Guild safe house called for cleaning up after yourself, at least to the point of putting dishes in the sink and trash in the can. That way, Gambit explains, the Guild knows if you left in a hurry or not and might be in need of assistance - which the Guild would provide for a further cut of the profits, of course.

Logan switches off the lights, and turns to shoo Gambit to bed; though the man is exhausted, he hasn’t yet made a move to get some rest, preferring apparently to sit silently by the fire, drinking coffee, eating cheesecake, and staring at flames.

When Logan turns to find Gambit and send him to bed, the man is right in front of him. Logan gives in and grabs him close. Gambit holds on hard.

Logan kisses him. Tasting Gambit for the first time, well, it isn’t perfect, but Logan’s never asked for perfection. Damn good is good enough.

He’s a little surprised this has never happened between them, when he thinks about it - but Logan’s going to save his thinking for keeping them safe and not overanalyze something that feels so good. Instead, he nudges Gambit toward the bedroom. They barely have to disconnect, they know each other’s moves so well, and reach the bed without a stumble.

They’ve never done this before, the two of them, but it feels perfectly natural to Logan to explore Gambit’s chest with his mouth, to lay a trail of kisses down his belly. To take Gambit up against him in strong arms, and give him pleasure, cock moving against cock, until Gambit arches and cries out, completely unselfconscious. To finish his own pleasure against Gambit’s skin, himself held close. 

Logan doesn’t sleep that night, keeping watch over his lover.

And tonight, he will not have to fear his dreams. Stryker spends a lot of time in Logan‘s nightmares. The true night terror for Logan is not a dream of the adamantium procedure, the unbearable pain that had sent his body into shock as he burned from the inside out. It was the memory of Stryker looking down from the catwalk, knowing what Logan would experience…and enjoying it.

Right before dawn, a flash bang grenade comes through the front window. Logan uncoils from his crouch near the door and takes the first member of the extraction team with a claw-punch to the face.

The back door explodes and smoke pours in.

Gambit snaps into motion against the second wave and deadly cards flash through the air, trailing red behind them like tracer fire against smoke.

It’s a fraught few minutes for Logan and Gambit, who have been up and ready for a few hours now, fighting three of the best commandos in the world in a narrow ranch house. From the corner of his eye, Logan sees the expensive coffeepot explode.

The commandoes must have orders not to kill Gambit, but that won’t matter in a minute when they realize they cannot re-capture their escaped test animal, but have to contain the situation and eliminate the witnesses.

The last commando in Logan’s zone goes down. Gambit works the other two, still by the back door, but there’s so much smoke and such a melee - Logan can’t really tell where Gambit even is, there are cards coming from so many directions - that Logan can’t jump in.

A half-second and the battle stutters, no more cards zip through the air, and Logan fears - but wait, something round burns red through the air, and with a smash of china a commando blows back through the smoke to land twitching and dying at Logan’s feet, his throat cut.

The other commando gets off a burst of gunfire and throws himself back, at the door. He reaches for an earbud and Logan’s heightened hearing picks up some clicks and squawks. That’s a comm code. They’re calling in air support.

“Back-up’s coming,“ Logan yells.

Rotors beat through the air, a copter coming straight at the house.

“Rocket launcher,” Gambit yells over the heavy sound. He throws himself through the gaping hole that used to be the back door.

Logan hurdles dead commandos, on Gambit’s heels.

The wind kicks up as they sprint through someone’s backyard, toward the scrubby neighborhood soccer field at the end of the block.

The safe house explodes.

Stryker is fucking nuts. Logan shakes his head. He’s known the man, hated him, tracked him enough to avoid him, for years now, and it’s a wonder he can still be surprised. A residential neighborhood, though, that’s a new one even for a guy who likes to experiment on teenagers.

The Blackbird decloaks and settles down on the soccer field. The door opens and the ramp extends. Gambit bounds up the ramp and pivots at the top to cover Logan, cards at the ready.

Logan pounds up the ramp, stops next to Gambit, and looks back. Stryker stands in the middle of the street, the burning house reflecting off his glasses. He looks straight at Logan and Gambit.

The ramp starts to retract and Gambit and Logan step into the jet.

Logan fumbles his way into a seat, and fights nausea that has nothing to do with motion sickness.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It will not do for the other denizens of the mansion to see his weakness - or pity him.

Most days, Gambit is very fond of Jean, but sometimes Jean retreats into scientist mode and she forgets her subjects are people. He can’t forgive that today.Gambit grips Jean’s arm. “That’s enough,“ he says.

Jean looks down at the syringe in her hand. “We don’t know what they gave you,” she says.

“They didn’t give me anything,” Gambit says, a core of iron under his voice. “And you already took some of my blood.”

“Remy, you don’t know what they could have given you. Just one more vial for testing. It won’t hurt, I promise.” Jean gives him that crooked smile, the one that still makes Logan kind of weak at the knees - Gambit’s seen it - but that has no effect on Gambit whatsoever.

He smiles the lazy smile he only brings out when he’s well and truly angry and someone is about to get blown up. “They hadn’t got that far,” he says.

Jean’s brow knits, then she shrugs. His injuries are superficial, after all.

Gambit extricates himself as soon as she has approved Logan’s doctoring, accepts the bottle of antibiotics she holds out. Answers the almost afterthought question Jean throws at him as he puts his shirt back on.

“So, there isn’t anything else? Anything more…personal?”

Oh, yes, Jeannie, because a Southern boy who’s been raped will answer vague questions. If he did have such a thing to report, it would not be to her. Gambit shakes his head, at her and in answer. “I’m fine,” he says. “I need some rest. Few days off. Thank you, cher.”

A firm ‘thank you’ can effectively end most unpleasant conversations, Gambit finds, and forestall some less than necessary killing. Or good, thorough kickings.

Gambit does not run to the elevators. He walks, firm and purposeful, clinging hard to the persona he takes such pains to cultivate. It will not do for the other denizens of the mansion to see his weakness - or pity him.

Every time Gambit returns to the mansion after an extended absence, he always greets the Professor in person. The Professor thinks it’s charming and old-fashioned, or so he says. To Gambit, it’s more the kind of courtesy where you shake hands to show you‘re not holding a sword: a dangerous sort of polite, where you spend a lot of time establishing whether your allies have decided to assassinate you while you are on vacation. Gambit trusts the Professor enough to live in his house and work with his team, but not enough to put his life entirely in the man’s control.

Gambit listens at the Professor’s office door for half a minute. Sounds like Logan is reporting. He taps at the door and opens it.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in bed or something?” Logan scowls at him.

Gambit feels his muscles slacken and most of his rage wash away, just remembering he isn‘t alone in this. He sways a little. Logan shifts in his chair. Gambit shakes his head. He doesn‘t need help here. Logan‘s just going to have to sit on his hands. “Bed isn’t going anywhere,” Gambit says. “Came to pay my respects to the Professor.”

“Welcome back, Remy,” the Professor says. “I trust you are not badly injured?”

“No,” Gambit says. “I’ll be fine in a few days. Kind of you to ask.”

“I want to thank you for putting yourself on the line the way you did,” Xavier says.

“My pleasure,” Gambit says, with a sketch of a bow.

“You done? Go to bed,” Logan says.

“If you don’t, he’s going to knock you over the head and carry you upstairs and put you to bed,” Scott says. “I imagine there could be video of that.”

Gambit flips Scott off, out of the Professor‘s sight, and turns to Logan. “Do I get a bedtime story?”

Logan sort of growls and stands up. “I’ll give you a bedtime story.”

Sounds good to Gambit. He can think of all kinds of bedroom stories he‘d like Logan to tell him. He nods to the Professor, Scott. “Gentlemen.”

Gambit leads the way to his bedroom, the huge one on the corner near the old servant‘s stairs, through all the public halls of the mansion, not the back way. He wants to stick to the shadows, he wants to skulk and stay out of sight, but he will not. He tells himself Stryker hasn’t that kind of power over him.

Logan actually puts Gambit to bed. Undresses him, big hand careful on the shallow cuts and purpling bruises left by Stryker‘s butchers. Gambit lets him ease his shirt off, tug off his boots, slide his pants down, a little bemused by it all. He’s worn out from all the terror and anger and blood, not to mention world shaking sex with his best friend. Too bad he’s going to pass out in about 17 seconds.

“Get in bed, already.“ Logan watches him stretch out on the fine white sheets, and draws the blankets up. Gambit catches his arm and tugs. Logan doesn’t need a second invitation.

“Tell me a story tomorrow, right?” Gambit yawns, and shifts until he’s got all his bits aligned with all Logan’s bits so he’s comfortable. He’s not sure if Logan’s comfortable but he doesn’t care.

“Sure. Little Red Riding Hood okay?”

“No, I want a Logan adventure. Something with a hot alien queen. And ropes.”

Logan snorts. “If I’d done that, I would have already told you that story.”

But Gambit is already falling asleep and he never replies.

Gambit rolls out of bed into a combat crouch, plucking a deck off the bedside table as he does. Distantly, the sound of teenagers arguing in the garden penetrates his battle readiness. He straightens. The adrenalin dump has his hands shaking, and he forces himself still, walks the Ace of Spades across still sore knuckles. Pull yourself together, man.

Logan is up and about already, though the sheets on his side of the bed are barely cool. The door closing and absence of his back-up, that’s what probably woke him.

Well, time to get back to normal. Gambit selects clothing: black button down shirt, stylish and expensive,  
tailored black trousers. He’s not making a statement with all the black, which is unlike him - he likes a bit of color - he just wants to hide the blood if any of his wounds open up. He ignores the nagging voice which says, black will help you hide in the shadows.

He takes a shower, washes in familiar soap. Works snarls from his hair with all the patience he can muster. Reapplies bandages as needed. Dresses, taking time to get everything just so. Finds his black hat. Leaves the staff in its accustomed corner of the room. He has several staff like objects stashed around the mansion, after all.

Gambit opens the door, armed with two decks, a throwing knife, and a poison ring: old fashioned, but it works. Especially when filled with tetradotoxin.

The hall is wide and open and there’s little cover. Gambit forces himself out. He’s sweating. His mouth is a desert. He is hyper-aware of his defenses. The bare hall at his back. And this isn’t nearly as bad as the first time he escaped Stryker.

Logan comes up the stairs, carrying a mug of coffee. He’s walking with that heavy tread he uses when he’s trying to be noticed. Gambit appreciates the effort.

“Was going to bring you breakfast in bed,” Logan says.

“This is it?” Gambit takes the offered mug and swallows half without tasting it. Black like the Devil’s soul, and at least half as hot. Just the way he likes it. He ducks in and kisses Logan thank you. Logan deepens the kiss a little. They’re pressed chest to chest.

Gambit draws back. “I’m hungry.”

“You want me to bring it to you?” Logan looks concerned. It comes across as kind of puzzled, unless you know him.

Gambit looks at the stairs. They might as well be a sheer drop, that’s how much he wants to go down them. “No. Kitchen’s fine.”

Trust Logan to stick to him all the way, walking at his shoulder like a bodyguard.  
In the mansion, life goes on. Gambit answers innocent questions from a mental distance, oh, about twenty feet or so. Some people want to hug him but Logan subtly backs them off, just by looming at the right moment, or leaning in to refresh Gambit’s cup, or bring him another waffle.

Conversation soon turns from Gambit’s little adventure to other matters. Storm - Stormy, of all people -  
accepts Gambit’s it’s nothing like he means it. She and Scott and some of the kids start arguing about summer vacation, and whether they should all go to the mountains or rent a big boat.

“Let’s go for a walk,” Logan says. His fingertips drop lightly on Gambit’s shoulder. His knuckles graze his cheek.

It’s getting warm, outdoors. Feels like a true spring, not the winter-spring of the mountains. Gambit scans the skies obsessively. Too many black helicopters lately. He keeps an eye on Logan: his enhanced hearing should tip them off to approaching aircraft.

Paranoia and rage whipsaw through him. Gambit practices breathing. He has to get past this.  
Gambit riffles through his ready-deck, primed for use. Red-fuchsia lightning flashes over his right hand. Damn it. His control is slipping. He shoves the deck back into his pocket and puts his powers under rigid control. He won’t let Stryker rule him.

Logan walks at his shoulder. He doesn’t miss much. He doesn’t say anything, either. Every man - every  
mutant - has his own demons. Bad manners to comment, that’s the rule around here.

That doesn’t stop Logan from offering an alternative. “Want to go back to bed?” Logan winds their fingers together.

“Please,” Gambit says, and is relieved to find sex is almost half the reason he wants to go back in.

 

The only person Gambit can stand to touch - and be touched by - is Logan. He keeps a no man‘s land between himself and others, and has all sorts of ways to enforce it: strategic furniture, a convenient errand, carrying his staff around, and leaning it in the crook of his elbow. Once or twice, out and out spinning it, passing it off as an impromptu display of arms. 

Logan has permission to touch all he likes. He’s thinking of saying prayers of thanks for that, though he hasn’t set foot in a church for about fifteen years, and hasn’t prayed for a hundred. He’s not just glad about the sex, either. Turns out, it’s really easy to love someone who is already your closest friend, and with that, Logan‘s protective instincts are dialed up to 11, as the kids would say.

So Logan tries to bring Gambit back to himself. He loves him as often as he can. He kisses and strokes his arms and hands in bed, holds his hands over his head when he fucks him, weaving their fingers together and squeezing in rhythm with his moving cock. Then there are the blow-jobs in the first floor butler’s pantry, and hand-jobs in the garage, with Gambit growling at him: you better not come on my new bike, old man.

He spends hours with Gambit in the scented darkness, learning every new thing about his lover. Having foolish conversations and making declarations. Logan’s a romantic. He can’t really hide that. He even tries not to hit people who think it’s cute.

“What’s the word for us?” Gambit wonders one evening, half asleep, one bare arm over the blanket as  
usual, ready for defense. “Not going to be your boyfriend.”

“Mates. You’re my mate,” Logan says, mouth to Gambit’s ear, and Gambit nods.

Outside the bedroom, things do not go so well for Gambit, though few people can see it. Gambit is a master at presenting himself the way he wants to be seen. When his control slips, Logan is there to step in.

As long as Gambit needs him, Logan will run interference, make excuses, get in his way when he starts to lose his temper with the kids, with Storm, with the Professor. Xavier should know what Gambit’s going through, Logan thinks, and begins to think less of the old man for seeming not to care.

“He can’t read me. Says my brain gives off static,” Gambit says, drowsily one night, sweat cooling on their bodies. Logan is a little pissed, still, though he knows Gambit prefers to keep his reaction under the radar.

He hates to show weakness.

“He should still know better,” Logan says into the warm space between them.

Gambit shrugs and plays fingers down Logan’s spine. “As long as you know,” he says.

So Logan fights this campaign alone and Gambit comes back to himself, week by week.

Sparring is an adventure, but Logan persists, session after session, day and night, until Gambit can rein in the aggression, pull his punches, reach the graceful control Logan so admires.

There comes a time when Gambit links arms with Storm again and puts his hand on Rogue‘s shoulder. He goes with Logan to buy motorcycle parts and they stop for a beer after. He plays pool with Bobby and Kitty and doesn’t manuever his back up against the wall at all times. He picks Scott’s pocket and leaves the take arranged neatly on Scott’s pillow - while Scott is sleeping. 

Weeks after their return, Logan wakes in the middle of the night, reaching for Gambit on empty sheets. His lover is sitting in the window seat, murmuring in French, then Swahili. Blossom and dirt and fox smells drift in the open window. Almost summer now.

Logan speaks both languages but he’s only catching Gambit’s side of the conversation, and he’s saying a lot of Yes’s and No’s and asking about technical matters: locks and security. Logan relaxes back into Gambit’s obscenely comfortable mattress. He’ll just doze ‘til Gambit comes back to bed. Then he’ll pounce. Gambit’s always in a good mood when he’s planning a job.

The air displaced by the closet door opening alerts Logan that not all is as he assumed. He opens his  
eyes. Gambit takes out a pack, his long coat, staff. This is serious: he’s taken out a bandolier of throwing knives and stars. Adds a sleek black pistol Logan doesn’t recognize.

“What’s up?” Logan says, pitching his voice low. Raised voices around Gambit tend to provoke a fight  
these days.

“Good. You’re awake,” Gambit says. “I have a line on Stryker. I’m going to track him down and kill him. Are you with me?”

Logan’s head swims, the Wolverine part of himself, the part that isn’t just a name, rising, seeking control. He gets up, goes to Gambit. He forces himself to stroke Gambit’s hair back gently behind his ear, tells his Wolverine-self, wait. “Always,” Logan says.

“I might need the beast,” Gambit says, meeting his look with one of his own: clear-eyed, purposeful, calculating.

Logan looks over his mate in the moonlight, catalogues his scars and his anger and his fear. Sees his determination and regained strength.

“We’re yours to command,” Logan says. He presses a kiss on Gambit’s lips, and Gambit catches him close for a breath. They break apart, Logan’s regret at not being able to linger tempered by the rising tide of the chase.

Logan dons his own gear, now hanging in Gambit’s closets. He takes Gambit’s staff up from its corner, tosses it to his lover.

Together, they find their way downstairs, quiet as quiet. Wheel motorcycles out into the moonless night. Mount the machines.

Roar through the gates side by side. Red fire flickers over one machine. A lit cigar glows from the other .

The pack is back on the hunt.


End file.
